


Star-Weavers

by starlightandink



Category: Original Work
Genre: But also, Death, Destruction, Gen, Hope, Immortals, Life - Freeform, Planet Destruction, Planets, Rebuilding, Stars, immortals having an existential crisis, immortals making universes, immortals watching as the universes are destroyed, me projecting my thoughts into a weird metaphor/story thingy about space, more than one existential crisis actually, or rather several universes, space, universe - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-29
Updated: 2020-07-29
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:53:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25588588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starlightandink/pseuds/starlightandink
Summary: The universe begins and ends and begins and ends and—Tell me, do you know who hangs stars in the sky?
Comments: 5
Kudos: 2





	Star-Weavers

When I saw the universe for the first time, the stars seemed to be infinite.

The stars then were not the ones seen today: they pulsed white-gold and turquoise green instead of orange-red. Still, they dotted the sky, blazing objects that lit up the dark, luminous and glittering against the endless almost-black blue of night.

Centuries and millennia passed, and the universe gave way—as the universe always does. When it finally crumbled, we raised another in its place, still with the endless black and blue, still with stars pulsing light. We raised another in its place, made of the ruins of the old.

In every universe we build, there is a constant about stars: they are flashing beacons, there to be companions during the night.

In every universe, there is a constant: stars burn.

* * *

When I touched a star for the first time, they flashed burgundy and slate-grey. When I touched a star for the first time, I flinched and I pulled back with a pained hiss.

Stars were cold in that universe. Colder than ice, colder than the warmth of the burgundy suggested. Colder than the infinite void of space and the sting of betrayal. Cold enough to numb your hands, cold enough to burn.

 _Why do stars burn?_ I asked, all bright-eyed naiveté and fragile, youthful innocence, cradling my burnt hands against my chest. _Why do beautiful things have to hurt?_

Star-burning is no laughing matter: in the time it took for the chill and the sting and the marks to disappear, two and a half moon cycles had passed, and in that time, I received no answers. Instead, I waited for days, perhaps months. Perhaps even years.

Still, I waited. I waited. I waited.

I waited, for this is a truth I know: the void will always answer. You need only listen.

 _Sometimes, to have beauty is to have power. To touch a star is to have power,_ a voice rumbled one day, distant yet still as if it were spoken directly into my ear. _And what is powerful is not easy to hold._

I did not understand. I would not understand for many centuries. Despite that, I took the burgundy and the slate-grey stars into my hands.

I did not let go.

* * *

When I hung a star in the sky for the first time, the universe was on the verge of collapse. I thought, in my vain, hopeful, foolish youth, perhaps I could save it. Save an entire universe from collapsing and imploding and crumbling to pieces.

I held a star in my palm—the sting had faded away long ago; the heat and the coldness of a star stopped mattering—and I placed it in the sky.

There was no fanfare to it, nothing grandiose or spectacular—only a child hoping to save the universe from its inevitable destruction. Only a desperate attempt to keep the universe intact, to keep its light shining.

It crumbled in the end, as all universes do.

And as I stared at the wreckage, I asked, _Why do we have the power to create when what we create is always destroyed in the end?_

 _Nothing is permanent, young one,_ the void said. The void was not unkind, was never unkind, but it sounded clinical and detached. It sounded as if this was an acceptable loss, something that could be cast and cut away with no strings attached—as if this was only another tally to an ever-growing list of universes made and destroyed, nothing more or less than that. I had been young then, too young to understand that was exactly the case: this was only one of millions.

_Then what is the purpose of hanging the stars if the stars will inevitably fade?_

The void's silence was fragile and solemn, heavier than the weight of a thousand planets. Fragile, as though this was the kind of silence that came before the final reckoning, the final judgement, as though it was as breakable as the spindle of blown glass.

 _There are few permanent things, child,_ the void said, and for the first time, it was more than an empty, hollow voice: it had life, and it sounded wistful. _Universes collapse. Stars fade. That is true. But it is better to have burned and faded than to have never existed at all._

I looked again at the wreckage, at the rubble. The stars there used to be bright: magenta and cyan that never failed to illuminate the dark. The stars there used to be a flash of color against an endless backdrop of black.

The stars there were nothing more than dust. The stars there would never exist again.

There was something both saddening and comforting about that.

* * *

When I saw the universe collapse for the first time, I had not cared. It would not be true to say I had been too young to remember: I saw it then I turned away, content to hide in the shadows of ruination and play as the universe ended. Why should I have cared when I was not the one destroyed? When I was not the one reduced to ash?

The second time, I remember more vividly.

The second time, I learned this: death and destruction are not synonymous.

Death is merciless. Death is inevitable. Death is precise. Death takes at exactly the right moments, never a moment too soon or too late. Death is phantoms lingering where something used to reside, a missing piece of the puzzle. Death is a hollow hanging heavy in your heart. Death is absence. Death is a result.

But death is not always violent.

The fifth universe came together in a matter of weeks—an unusually rapid creation process. Perhaps that alone should have been some sort of warning, a sign that this universe was not as stable, not as well-crafted as it should have been. If it had been, we did not heed it, and it fell apart after a mere million years.

Despite the speed of its creation, it did not die quickly. Up until that point, I had never known death to be slow, but the end of this universe was—it had taken several moon cycles for this universe to finally end. It was nothing like the first universe: its stars did not explode in blinding halos of light and flame, nor did its planets break and fall apart, debris sent crashing and spiraling away. No, there had been nothing of the sort.

This demise had instead been peaceful.

The stars had dimmed, first. Without their lights, gold and indigo, planets grew cold. What little sustained life had gone empty, until they were nothing more than empty husks. Shells of what had once been. The planets crumbled, a slow withering until all that remained were dust and ashes.

I could only watch as it decayed.

This is something I learned in the aftermath: death does not always have to be a terrible thing, lurking in dark corners and in darker times.

Sometimes, death can be a mercy.

* * *

When I built a universe for the first time, the stars were naught more than tiny pinpricks of white light. A dozen of them fit in my hands, and I hung them in the sky, bright and blazing and burning as stars always were. Beacons and warnings, guides and omens: these stars fit the role perfectly.

This universe ended, as all universes did.

I did not cry when it did. I did not hang any more stars, as if it might be enough to sustain it further. I did not look away from halos of blinding light, from planets crumbling inwards. I did not ask questions about destruction and starlight and memory—only answered them.

The universe ended.

From the void, millions and millions and millions of years away, someone asked, _Why do we keep building universes when they all collapse in the end?_

 _To create is a great honor,_ I said. _We are able to hang the stars in the sky, and this, too, is a great gift. We must use it._

_Only have it all crumble, only to have it destroyed._

_The universe ends,_ I said. _But it always begins anew. And look—_

In my hands were dozens and dozens of bright-blazing stars, burning cold, burning hot, burning with the promise of a new beginning.

**Author's Note:**

> (i,,, don't quite know how to explain this one. but let me try, yeah?)
> 
> when i was in fifth grade, about ten-going-on-eleven-years-old, my teacher made us watch as bunch of space documentaries. a bunch. i can't express how much because it's like four years. anyway. one documentary brought up a theory that there were a bunch of previous universes before ours but they'd all been destroyed. because of who i am as a person, at ten-almost-eleven, i automatically thought, _okay, but what if there were a bunch of immortals who're in charge of this?_
> 
> the original plan was to make a multi-chapter story about it. clearly, that didn't happen. and i didn't write it immediately: i kept it at the back of my mind then (circa seventh grade, around June) i wrote it once i got home after my finals. i proceeded to procrastinate and finish it six months later in December.
> 
> it's not really about space for me, you feel? it's not about destruction or death or the end of things. or, at least, to me it's not only that. we—or at least i—write the things we want to remember. and i wrote this to remind myself that even when it looks like the end of the world or _is_ actually the end of the world, there's always hope. there's always hope and the chance to rebuild and begin again.
> 
> find me on [tumblr](https://we-are-made-of-stories.tumblr.com/).


End file.
